One of the loveliest things I’m experiencing as I’m travelling across South Wales drawing ancient Neolithic stones is the flora; the lichens on the stones unchanging throughout the seasons, plants in the fields and hedgerows an ever-changing delight of colour, scent and texture. Last week’s journey to Kidwelly and Ferryside took us through hedgerows full of wild roses and honeysuckle, rhosod â llaeth y gaseg in Welsh. In Shakespeare’s plays, the little white rosa arvensis is called musk rose and the honeysuckle is woodbine, which also used to be the name of a brand of strong cigarettes many years ago. Technically, lichens are not plants but a composite life form of algae or cyanobacteria living in a symbiotic relationship with filaments of fungi and they can be many years old.

While I’ve been travelling across South Wales with archaeologist Dewi Bowen, drawing megaliths in the ancient Neolithic landscape, we’ve been accompanied by film maker Melvyn Williams and he’s been editing up short films as we go along. Here’s his latest instalment in the story of The Hunt / Yr Helfa. It’s just under 4 minutes long and it’s of me drawing and talking about the stones and how they inspire me……

All the work I’m doing will eventually be featured in a solo show in The Worker’s Gallery in the Rhondda Valley in September. If you want to know more, please click here. And to see more of my work for sale, please click here.